What do you get if you take a Scaled Composites carrier craft (like WhiteKnightTwo), scale it up and strap a variant of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket beneath it? The answer is Stratolaunch Systems.

Stratolaunch Systems is a new company founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan famous for his Voyager which was the first plane to circum-navigate the globe without refueling and as the designer for SpaceShipOne which won the Ansari X-Prize by launching from a carrier craft and suceeding in crossing the Kármán line into space.

To put the sheer upscaling of the carrier craft into perspective, it will be the largest plane ever flown. With a wingspan of 385 feet, it’s almost three times the wingspan of WhiteKnightTwo (140 feet) and significantly larger than an Airbus 380 (262 feet).

So how does it compare against Virgin Galactic’s sub-orbital WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo. While a SS2 will max out at an altitude of 110km, with a cargo of 2 crew and six passengers, Stratolaunch Systems will go much higher delivering 6100 kg to LEO. Compare that to the Falcon 9 which will put 10450 kg into LEO and you have a very practical and viable extension of the WK2/SS2 premise. As a fully orbital launcher, it will be able to deliver satellites into orbit or deliver payloads to the ISS or future stations such as the Russian OPSEK (a mixture of Russian modules detached from the ISS and new modules) or Bigelow’s CSS.

Perhaps more importantly however it would be able to put manned capsules into LEO, which could open up some very exciting opportunities for space tourism especially if it’s cheaper than a traditional launch. While it won’t be putting heavy communications satellites into geostationary orbit or heavy modules into LEO (something we’ll leave to Delta IV Heavys and hopefully in the future Falcon Heavys and maybe SLS), with the current reliance on putting people into space in Russian Soyuz capsules, putting alternatives into the market (and alternatives to the exciting COTS/CCDev2 plans) will only aide market competition and flexibility to the client.

With the names and contractors attached to this project, Stratolaunch Systems is one to watch.

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This is my first post on space flight, so please let me know if there are an inaccuracies or incorrect conclusions.